Captain’s Kind Act For Mother Goes Viral

By Charley Frank, Apr 29, 2017

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Children on planes can often be restless and give their parents a lot of trouble when trying to calm them. In an attempt to not disturb other passengers, parents often use different techniques between them, making it a joint effort. However, some parents are not as fortunate to have another pair of hands and have to deal with their children alone.

One mother was flying alone on Finnair with her four young boys, which inevitably proved quite the handful for her. As many other passengers looked on at the lone mother having a hard time with her babies, the crew noticed her struggle and knew they had to do something to help.

Captain Tom Nystrom then stepped in to help the overwhelmed mother after feeling empathetic towards her. As it turned out, the captain had children of his own so wanted to help out a fellow parent in need. Captain Tom then offered to hold one of the babies and feed him while the mother tended to the other.

He said of his helpfulness “I have children of my own…so it came natural to me to help this customer with her babies,” Due to the babies being unfamiliar with the captain, they came up with a system whereby if one of the babies started to cry, they would swap kids and he would then feed the other.

Once the crew noticed the captain helping, they decided to follow suit and offer the mother some extra hands to take care of the boys. One flight attended named Ami Niemela posted a picture on Instagram of the captain feeding the baby, explaining how they understood the position of the mother and made every attempt to help her in any way that they could. Unsurprisingly, her post received over 1,000 likes with many commending their kindness during such a stressful time for a new mother.

Finnair went on to post about the incident on their own Twitter account, which went viral, showing that they genuinely care about their passengers. This incident had been a wave of good press for the airline as they received the Best European Airline award at the TTG China Travel Awards for the second year in a row.